Students turned off by vocational A-levels

The government's strategy to boost practical and vocational skills is failing to attract young people, yesterday's exam results revealed.

There was a further drop in the entries for vocational A-levels, ranging from hospitality and catering to construction and travel and tourism, prompting calls for a rethink by education ministers.

In the annual furore over A-level academic standards and alarm about the fall in entries for modern languages and physics, the crumbling of the government's policy on vocational training has gone unnoticed, but the figures could be embarrassing for the government.

The Department for Education and Skills insisted that vocational qualifications were popular with students and employers.

Vocational A-levels were introduced three years ago in place of GNVQs in an effort to boost the standing of more practical subjects and encourage more young people to take them. The opposite has happened. From about 80,000 candidates for level three GNVQs - equivalent to A-levels - in their last full year in 2000, numbers have declined to 43,800 last year and 39,000 this year. Students typically sit double awards in a subject like information technology or science, which the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority rates as equivalent to two A-levels.

The trend is apparent in all double award subjects - for example, business down from 10,766 to 9,986; media down from 1,506 to 1,254; travel and tourism down from 5,116 to 4,619.

In some subjects numbers are very low in any case - construction had 389 candidates this year compared to 571 in 2003. Manufacturing had only 22 this year, 10 fewer than last year.

Pass rates and the percentage of candidates gaining A grades increased faster than for academic A-levels this year.

A DfES spokeswoman said: "As the Joint Council for Qualifications made clear, the results show that candidates are increasingly successful in all VCEs [vocational qualifications]. These A-levels are an important part of the range of vocational qualifications available."

She pointed out that the numbers taking single award vocational A-levels had risen from 40,914 to 42,708 to balance the fall in double awards. "Our ambition is for both a world-class academic offer and improved vocational and work-based routes with qualifications every bit as demanding and valued as academic ones," she said. The spokeswoman added: "Vocational qualifications are popular with students and employers - in 2002/03 the vast majority of awards (95%) at level three achieved by those aged 19 and over were by the vocational route. Vocational A-levels are an important part of the range of vocational qualifications available."

But Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckingham University, said it had been a mistake to "academicise" practical subjects. "It was argued that GNVQs were not popular because they were seen as second-rate. The way to make them more appealing and attractive was to turn them into A-levels so they would have parity of esteem. Quite the reverse seems to have happened," he said.

The future of school and college qualifications is being reviewed for the government by Mike Tomlinson, the former chief inspector of schools, who is considering bringing vocational and academic qualifications closer together in an overarching diploma.

Professor Smithers is strongly opposed to this approach. "The way forward is to make sure these qualifications work in their own terms. It is clear at the moment vocational qualifications are not attractive to students because they don't form a clear ladder into employment and they are not respected by employers," he commented.

He said instead of leading to work, vocational qualifications had been "hijacked as a lesser route into higher education" and the introduction of vocational A-levels had exacerbated that.